


Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

by sharkneto



Series: let your heart be light [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Holidays, Sibling Bonding, am i supposed to ramble in ao3 tags i've never posted here before, and then made myself sadder thinking about how five has had so many shitty lonely christmases, fluff with a dabble of angst because this is the umbrella academy, i was getting sad about how i'll be spending christmas alone this year, so here's a fic about that but with siblings to make it better, unbeta'd we die like ben, why is delores' name spelled wrong in the official ao3 tag system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27822211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkneto/pseuds/sharkneto
Summary: Five and Klaus pick Allison up from the airport for the holidays and they get to reminiscing about Christmases past on the car ride home.OrFive has never had a good Christmas in his life but maybe this year they can change that.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Dolores/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: let your heart be light [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2062821
Comments: 18
Kudos: 151





	Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Allison bundles her coat tighter against the flurry gently blowing past as she searches down the row of cars for her brothers. Airport pickups are always messy and it doesn’t help Mom didn’t clarify which brothers were coming when she called to let them know she’d landed. She shivers and keeps scanning for Dad’s car. Or Diego’s. This would be so much easier if she knew which one.

Home for the holidays; it’s been years since she’s done that. But if there were ever a year to do it, this was it. Claire is with Patrick until after Christmas, a fact that pangs painfully against her heart. Still, the Hargreeves are more or less a family again, clawing their way back together after finally, finally making it to the correct timeline and averting the apocalypse. And her alternative was to sit feeling sorry for herself in California and missing Claire, alone. 

Plus, this way she can help Five celebrate his first Christmas back – something all the siblings have secretly been looking forward to. Their birthday had been a disaster. They realized too late that, for the past 45 years, the day had been an unimaginably painful reminder to Five that his entire family was dead, and that wasn’t suddenly going to stop even though they were alive again. And it’s not like he’d warned them of what a massive trigger it was for him. There was a lot of shouting, some minor injuries, but they sort of worked through it. As much as they ever worked through anything relating to emotions.

Christmas was going to be better. Allison was sure of it.

 _Speak of the devil_ , she thinks to herself, lips quirking up as she spots Dad’s car pulling up a ways down the curb, Five driving and Klaus in the passenger seat talking animatedly. Five catches sight of her and sends her a small two fingered wave, expression softening slightly. She waves back and drags her suitcase towards the car.

She throws the suitcase into the trunk before sliding into the backseat, catching Klaus in the middle of whatever he’s talking about. Christmas music quietly floats from the radio.

“…so all the others are little bitches about it, because they don’t have a fancy red nose and they’re all jealous—”

“Allison!” Five cuts him off and makes eye contact with her through the review mirror, exasperated expression familiar, “Great timing. If I had to hear another word about reindeer I was going to kick Klaus out and let him figure out a way home on his own.”

Klaus whips around to face her, “Allison! Did you know Five didn’t know about Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer?!”

“I forgot elephants were real, why are you so surprised I forgot about an imaginary reindeer.”

Allison laughs, “How do you forget elephants are real?”

“Don’t see or think about them for forty years. Hell of a shock when I went to India for the first time.”

She snorts before turning to the current problem at hand, “Let me drive. You’re going to get pulled over.”

Five reflexively tightens his grip on the steering wheel, “I am perfectly capable of driving. If anyone has a problem with it you can just Rumor them.”

Allison sends him a disapproving look through the mirror but lets it drop. It’s not worth the effort of Rumoring him to switch with her and she would never win trying to physically wrestle him out; Luther is the only one who stands a chance at getting Five somewhere he doesn’t want to go and even that is still a fight. Five has grown a little in the months he’s been back – hopefully anyone who sees them will think he’s just a particularly small sixteen-year-old. 

Five pulls them back into traffic and on their way to the Academy. Allison gets comfortable in her seat.

“Where’s everyone else at?” she asks.

“Luther and Diego went to get a tree and Vanya is with her orchestra to rehearse for that Nutcracker thing tomorrow,” Five reports, scanning traffic as he merges them onto the highway.

“That tree isn’t going to fit in the house, is it?” Klaus asks, stretching languidly and watching cars out his window.

“Absolutely not,” Allison laughs. Luther and Diego have come a long way since the first apocalypse, but their one-upmanship combined with Luther’s inability to recognize how large or heavy anything actually is guarantees their tree won’t fit through the door.

She settles into an easy conversation with Klaus, updating him on LA while he offers non sequitur opinions on other actors and semi-current fashion trends. Five hums along every once in a while but otherwise stays out of it and focused on the slightly snowy road.

A comfortable silence eventually falls over the car. _Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree_ pumps quietly.

Klaus breaks the silence, “Hey, what was everyone’s last Christmas? We were all over the place last December. I was at this fantastic party by Miriam, decorations absolutely amazing and Ben—” Klaus falters for a moment at mentioning Ben. Allison’s heart thumps painfully. He recovers almost immediately, “It’s a real tragedy I was still going sober, then, the alcohol selection alone was phenomenal. Practically rained champagne.”

Most of them have had thirteen years to come to terms with Ben’s death. Klaus has had less than a year and so much longer with him. Allison catches his eye and sends him a sympathetic smile.

“I was with Ray,” she offers, embracing the familiar ache thinking about Raymond brings up. “We’d been married just over a month and went crazy decorating our house for it. We waited too long to get a tree so the one we got was just the saddest thing. But it was perfect.” Klaus reaches a hand back and she catches it, giving him a careful squeeze.

They wait for Five, who keeps staring out the windshield.

“Five?” she prompts.

He continues to stare ahead, ignoring her.

“If you don’t want to share just say so,” she says, irritation breaking through the nice moment she was having with Klaus.

“I’m thinking,” Five snaps back, “I think my last Christmas was three years ago.”

Klaus frowns, “How do you not have a Christmas for three years? It’s an annual event.”

Five shrugs, “Didn’t hit a December twenty-fifth.”

Allison closes her eyes and takes a deep breath against Five’s insane time travel calendar, “And?”

“And what?”

 _Why does he have to make everything so difficult_ , she thinks. Out loud she pushes again, “And what did you do?”

“Worked.”

How is Klaus the least annoying brother in this car.

She does her best to swallow her frustration, “Worked? That’s it?”

“I don’t know what else you want here, Allison.”

“Some details?” she sends him an incredulous look through the review mirror. He meets it with a flat glare and works his jaw.

“Do you? What you want to hear about is how, on December 25 in 1894, I snuck into a private holiday party to murder a man in cold blood because the Commission told me to? Those the fun details you want?”

 _Shit_. These are how Five anecdotes always end. Either horrendously depressing because of the apocalypse or horrendously depressing because he murdered someone.

“Yes,” she manages to force out, “Thank you.”

“Delighted to oblige,” he bites back.

Uncomfortable silence descends. Five honks and flips off a car that, as far as Allison can tell, was committing the crime of driving normally.

Klaus turns around in his seat to say something to her but pauses as his gaze shifts to study the empty seat beside her. She stiffens and widens her eyes in warning at him. If she is sitting by a ghost she _does not_ want to know.

“Heeeeyyyy Five?” Klaus says, still staring at the empty seat.

“What.”

“That guy you festively murdered a hundred years ago. Would he happen to be a portly chap with a truly impressive mustache?”

Five grimaces, “Yes.”

Allison unbuckles and slides herself as far as possible from the ghost’s seat.

“Looks like you got him in a nice clean shot through the eye. Kind of you to avoid his monocle. That would have been messy.”

“Mmmm.”

“He’s actually quite festive, you know? He’s got a top hat that he put some holly on. It’s nice. Really brings the holiday spirit. Ha! Holiday spirit.”

“Klaus?”

“Yes, _mein bruder_?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Klaus holds up his hands in surrender and makes a shooing motion at the empty seat. Allison chooses to believe that means the ghost is gone. She will not be asking for confirmation. Bing Crosby warbles from the radio.

The new silence is even worse than the previous one. How are they still fifteen minutes from the Academy? Allison wills the traffic to speed up.

Klaus breaks the silence again, “So Five’s last Christmas was… not great. But he didn’t celebrate! Fivey what was the last Christmas you celebrated?”

Allison almost slaps him on the arm. If Five deigns to answer it’s only going to be even more miserable.

Unexpectedly, Five’s expression softens instead of curdling. Which means he’s thinking about Delores, who, as just an abstract concept, is so depressing she makes Allison want to cry. She’s actually talked with her therapist a couple times about how to come to terms with the mannequin her littlest oldest brother hallucinated an entire personality for and fell in love with because there was literally no other person in existence with him for forty years.

“We stopped officially celebrating pretty early on. I mean, if I found something nice for Delores, I might wait to give it to her then but. We didn’t really make it a thing,” Five says quietly.

Allison practically holds her breath. So far so good.

His face pinches slightly, “I think the last official celebration was when I was twenty. Or twenty-one? Somewhere around there. It had hit the point where it wasn’t practical to break rationing for an arbitrary holiday anymore. Never was, actually, but I was a dumb kid. But I had found a can of pineapple a couple days before and saved it for Christmas. Ate it with a can of dog food.”

And there they go. Allison doesn’t know what to say.

“I gave Delores a new sweater. It had blue sequins on it,” Five continues and, shit, he’s getting that haggard look he gets when he’s slipping back into apocalypse memories. He can’t always pull himself back out and he’s _driving_.

“That’s… nice,” Klaus offers, and it’s just enough to bring Five back. Allison sighs in relief. 

Five blinks and breathes deeply, refocusing more fully on the road, “The real Christmas miracle was the pineapples didn’t give me botulism. They were seven years expired.”

“Five?” Klaus asks.

“Hmm?”

“Do you have any Christmases that aren’t depressing as fuck?”

Five rolls his eyes, “How do you feel about childhood Christmases one through twelve?”

“Oh my god, Five, why is your life like this.”

“Well!” Allison interjects, slapping her hands to her thighs to catch their attention, “We’ll just have to make this Christmas a good one!”

Klaus nods sagely, “Should be easy. The bar is so, so low for Five.”

Five shakes his head, fully committing to driving to ignore them, but she thinks she catches a flash of a repressed smile through the review mirror.

As sad as Five’s entire life has been, the tangent somehow brings the mood back up and the last, quiet ten minutes of the drive are genuinely nice. Allison catches herself humming along to the radio a few times. Klaus taps along, too, but otherwise seems to be a ways away. She makes a mental note to check in with how he’s doing later.

They finally make it back to the Academy and Diego’s car is already pulled into the alley. There are pine needles everywhere. Klaus bounds out immediately to go investigate the tree situation.

Allison slowly makes her way to grab her bag from the trunk. Keys jangle as Five locks the car.

“Hey Five?” she pauses after shutting the trunk. He looks up from the car door, eyebrows raised. “Do you want Mom to add pineapple to Christmas dinner?”

He snorts and she’s graced with a rare Genuine Five Smile, “Christ, that’s depressing.”

She quirks a smile back at him and raises an eyebrow, “That’s not an answer.”

He actually takes a moment to think about it, expression falling slightly. He looks back up at her, “Yeah. Some pineapple would be nice.”

Telegraphing her movements, Allison rounds the corner of the car and carefully pulls Five into a one-armed hug. He stiffens for a moment before cautiously wrapping an arm around her to return it. She knows he loves these interactions but doesn’t really know what to do with them. That’s ok – they’re working on it.

“Merry Christmas, Five. I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Merry Christmas, Allison.” She hears the _I’m so glad to be back_ that he can’t say.

Allison lets the moment sit for a few seconds more, pulling back before Five can start overthinking the hug. She smiles at him, “Come on, lets go see what monstrosity Luther and Diego brought back.” They turn and head towards the Academy.

It’s going to be a good Christmas.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been mentally writing Umbrella Academy stories for months now but the holiday blues gave me the kick I needed to actually write one out. Unbeta'd, so if there's any wonky grammar going on in there let me know so I can edit that right up. 
> 
> Love to hear your thoughts! You can always drop me a line on tumblr, too, at sharkneto
> 
> Happy Holidays to everyone and hope you have a better time than Five has.


End file.
